1. Field of the Invention
Methods and apparatuses consistent with the present invention relate to performing synchronization between a podcasting client and a portable device, and, more particularly, synchronizing feed information and content stored in a podcasting client with a portable device, and performing synchronization based on feed change information of the podcasting client and feed change information of the portable device.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the generalization of the Internet, user-created content, which may be represented by a blog, is wide spread. “Blog” is a compound word of “web” and “log”. Blogs are places where users can freely upload their diaries, columns, articles, and so forth, and easily make their own space without knowing how to create a home page. In addition, a user can form a far-reaching content community around multimedia content registered in a blog post, and can make personal-media communications with blog users.
Existing blogs are text-oriented, but recently, preparation and sharing of content such as music, moving images, and so on, have been actively achieved through blogs. Such an action of distributing or sharing content through blogs is called a “podcasting” (which is a compound word of “iPOD” that is manufactured by Apple Inc. and “broadcasting”), and the construction of podcasting is shown in FIG. 1.
Podcasting involves uploading content prepared by a content provider to a web server using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and preparing a post of the corresponding content. When the content is uploaded to the web server, a blog system of the web server generates an RSS document that includes Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed information of the newly generated post.
A podcasting client (e.g., iPodder or iTunes) of a content receiver side collects the RSS document of the content newly registered in the web server. At this time, the podcasting client collects feed information using a work produced by the content receiver as a feedback.
Specifically, if a work such as registration of a new feed channel, deletion of the existing feed channel, reading of the collected feed, and so forth, is produced by the content receiver, the podcasting client collects the feed information by feeding back such information.
If the RSS document is collected as described above, the podcasting client extracts the content from the collected RSS document, and shows a user the extracted content. If a download of the content is requested, the podcasting client downloads the corresponding content to the PC of the content receiver. Then, the content receiver plays the downloaded content on the PC through a media player, or copies the downloaded content into a portable device.
The downloaded content may be copied into the portable device through a synchronization work between the podcasting client and the portable device. However, according to the related art synchronization method, since the content-oriented synchronization is performed, only the content stored in the PC is transmitted to the portable device, but the feed information is not transmitted to the portable device. In addition, since the related art synchronization method supports only a unidirectional policy, the podcasting client cannot use the work performed on the portable device as the feedback for the feed collection in the case where the registration or deletion of the feed channel is performed on the portable device.